Voice of the People, Feb. 01

February 01, 2013

Health risks

In "Why should doctors ask teen if family has guns?" (News, Jan. 23), Tribune columnist John Kass reacted to a pediatrician asking a teenage boy without his parents being present if guns were in their home, when his reason for being in the hospital did not relate to guns.

Kass mocks the inquiry by a hospital's pediatric staff to the possible existence of guns in a teenager's home. Physicians frequently ask questions seemingly unrelated to a patient's presenting complaint. These questions are asked to either clarify a diagnosis or to address a potential health risk to the patient and his or her family.

Guns in the home are a health risk to children. Physicians ask questions of patients without family members present to ensure that a family member's presence does not affect the answers.

With our knowledge of the risk of harm to children created by the presence of guns in the home, the doctors at Advocate Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn acted responsibly with respect for their patient and the public. I would urge Kass to consider rewriting his column.

I found the John Kass column regarding asking about guns in a full medical history to be uninformed and unnecessarily inflammatory. A complete medical history involves a detailed social history. For adults this involves sexual history, substance use, marital status and employment. For children and adolescents this means their engagement in school, drug and alcohol use, and things such as bike helmets, seat belts and having firearms in the home.

There residents, who are in a rigorous training program, did their job, asking about grades, school engagement and home safety conditions. Social conditions play a very large role in the health and development of children and adolescents. To say it is an invasion of privacy is simply silly.

John Kass questions why doctors should ask teens if their family has guns. But the question should be why more physicians don't ask this question.

Times have changed. The diseases that used to be the main threats to our patients' health have been so significantly diminished by successful sanitation, vaccination and antibiotics that new problems have emerged as the primary threats to the health of our patients.

If our job is to protect the health of our patients, we should make sure, at any chance we get, that they are using their seat belts, and that guns and ammunition are stored properly in homes that have them.

For teens, firearms are the third-leading cause of death, and in 2009, one in four injury deaths in teens was firearm-related. The mere presence of a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide — even among those with no previous psychiatric diagnosis. Teens can act impulsively; properly securing firearms in the home can prevent injury and death.

Studies have demonstrated that families are more likely to secure their firearms if the issue is addressed by a physician.

The suggestion that parents should be fearful of the government knowing about their ownership of firearms via information provided by their doctors is as unfounded as it is inflammatory.

— Dr. Alison Tothy, secretary of the Executive Committee, chairperson of the Committee on Injury and Violence Prevention, Illinois Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics, Chicago

Shattering memory

Thanks to David McGrath for the essay on his experience with guns growing up (Perspective, Jan. 23). I grew up in a small town in central Illinois (population: 900). My world was shattered one Sunday afternoon in November when I was 12 years old. A neighbor stopped at my house to ask my father to accompany him to our neighbors' house to inform them that their 16-year-old son was dead, shot in the neck, in a hunting accident. The victim and four other boys were out pheasant hunting on a nearby farm when the accident happened. He was the neighbors' only son.

I am nearly 69, and his mother still survives today at 100, but this is something I never forgot and something his family had to live with for the rest of their lives.

I never thought of myself as "hating on the Second Amendment," but where is the common sense of owning guns?